The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism

A major pillar of Protestant theology is that the Bible is sufficient in itself with no need for tradition. This was a reaction to the Roman Catholic doctrine that the teachings of the Church are as important as the Bible. Catholics point out an obvious problem with the Protestant position: the list of books, or canon, is itself a tradition, and indeed for the Old Testament the Protestant and Catholic canons differ. Beckwith seeks to obviate that problem by arguing that the Old Testament canon was firmly fixed before the time of Jesus in a form identical to the current Protestant one, that Jesus endorsed this canon and therefore it has divine sanction. This book is thus polemical. Beckwith marshals a vast amount of evidence, and this gives the book some value, but he is biased and selective. Further, whenever he comes to a difficulty that he cannot overcome, he blithely dismisses it. For example, faced with the substantial additional material in the Catholic versions of Esther and Daniel compared with the Protestant ones, he does not attempt to show that the canon consisted of the Protestant versions of these books. Instead, he calls this a problem of textual criticism rather than canon. Textual criticism deals with odd differences of words, maybe the occasional whole verse added or omitted, but never with the addition of several extra chapters! Beckwith's other fault is that he has long digressions on matters of at best marginal relevance. In summary, you can admire the erudition in this book, but treat everything it says with great caution unless you can check it.